at auctions and second-hand stores. One day at an auction he bought
twenty unbound volumes of the _North American Review_ for two dollars.
These he had bound and delivered at the telegraph office. One morning,
about three o'clock, he started off for home at a rapid pace with ten
volumes on his shoulder. Very soon he became conscious of the fact that
bullets were flying around him. He stopped, and a breathless policeman
came up and seized him as a suspicious character, ordering him to drop
his parcel and explain matters. Opening the package, he showed the
books, somewhat to the disgust of the officer, who imagined he had
caught a burglar sneaking away with his booty. Edison explained that,
being deaf, he had heard no challenge, and therefore had kept moving;
and the policeman remarked, apologetically, it was well for Edison he
was not a better shot.
Through all his travels Edison has preserved these books, and he has
them now in his library at Llewelyn Park, Orange, New Jersey.
After two years at Louisville, Edison went back North as far as
Detroit, but soon returned to Louisville. At this time there was a
great deal of exaggerated talk and report about the sunny life and easy
wealth of South America. This idea appealed especially to telegraph
operators, and young Edison, with his fertile imagination, was readily
inflamed with the glowing idea of these great possibilities.
Once more he threw up his work, and, with a couple of young friends,
made his way to New Orleans, where they expected to catch a specially
chartered steamer for Brazil.
They arrived in New Orleans just at the time of the great riot, when
the city was in the hands of a mob. The government had seized the
steamer for carrying troops. The young men therefore visited another
shipping office to make inquiries about vessels for Brazil.
Here they got into conversation with an old Spaniard, to whom they
explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South America,
and was very emphatic in advising them that the worst thing they
could do was to leave the United States, whose freedom, calm, and
opportunities could not be equaled anywhere on the face of the globe.
Edison took the Spaniard's advice, and made his way North again. He
heard later that his two companions had gone to Vera Cruz and had died
there of yellow fever.
He returned to Louisville and resumed work there. He seems to have been
fairly comfortable and happy at this time. He surrounded himself with
books and various apparatus, and even indited a treatise on electricity.
It is well known that Edison is very studious and a great reader,
but his associates sometimes felt surprised at his fund of general
information. His own words throw some light upon this subject: "The
second time I was in Louisville the Telegraph Company had moved into
a new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press job.
In fact, I was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking of
press report a specialty. The newspaper men allowed me to come over,
after the paper went to press, at 3 A.M., and get all the exchanges
I wanted. These I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I
never slept more than four or five hours, so that I would awake at
nine or ten and read these papers until dinner-time. I thus kept
posted, and knew from their activity every member of Congress, and what
committees they were on, and all about the topical doings, as well
as the prices of breadstuffs in all the primary markets. I was in a
much better position than most operators to call on my imagination to
supply missing words or sentences, which were frequent in those days
of old, rotten wires, badly insulated, especially on stormy nights.
Upon such occasions I had to supply in some cases one-fifth of the
whole matter--pure guessing--but I got caught only once. There had been
some kind of convention in Virginia, in which John Minor Botts was the
leading figure. There was great excitement about it, and two votes had
been taken in the convention on the two days. There was no doubt that
the vote the next day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up
about ten o'clock, and my wire worked badly, and there was a cessation
of all signals; then I made out the words 'Minor Botts.' The next was a
New York item. I filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the
vote had gone as I was sure it would go. But next day I learned that,
instead of there being a vote, the convention had adjourned without
action until the day after."
The insatiable thirst for knowledge beyond known facts again proved
Edison's undoing. Operators were strictly forbidden to remove
instruments or to use batteries except on extra work. This rule did
not mean much to Edison, who had access to no other instruments
except those of the company. "I went one night," he says, "into the
battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for experimenting. The
carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through to the manager's
room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The next morning
I was summoned before him, and told that what the company wanted was
operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay and get
out."
Thus he was once more thrown upon the world. He went back to
Cincinnati, and began his second term there as an operator. He was
again put on night duty, much to his satisfaction. He rented a room on
the top floor of an office building, bought a cot and an oil-stove, a
foot lathe, and some tools.
He became acquainted with Mr. Sommers, superintendent of telegraph of
the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to
take such scrap apparatus as he might desire that was of no use to the
company.
Edison and Sommers became very friendly, and were congenial in many
ways. Both of them enjoyed jokes of a practical nature, and Edison
relates one of them as follows: "Sommers was a very witty man," he
says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting
telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could
have got it. I soon became the possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff
induction coil, which, although it would only give a small spark,
would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could
not let go of the apparatus. One day we went down to the roundhouse
of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long
wash-tank in the room with the coil, one electrode being connected to
earth. Above this wash-room was a flat roof. We bored a hole through
the roof, and could see the men as they came in. The first man as he
entered dipped his hands in the water. The floor, being wet, formed a
circuit, and up went his hands. He tried it the second time, with the
same result. He then stood against the wall with a puzzled expression.
We surmised that he was waiting for somebody else to come in, which
occurred shortly after, with the same result. Then they went out, and
the place was soon crowded and there was considerable excitement.
Various theories were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. We
enjoyed the sport immensely."
The reader must remember this occurred forty years ago, when
electricity was not popularly understood. Had it occurred to-day the
mystery would have soon been explained.
It is interesting to note that the germ of Edison's quadruplex
originated while he was at the Cincinnati office. There he became
acquainted with George Ellsworth, a telegraph operator who left the
regular telegraph service to become an operator for the Confederate
guerilla Morgan.
"We soon became acquainted," says Edison of this period in Cincinnati,
"and he wanted me to invent a secret method of sending despatches, so
that an intermediate operator could not tap the wire and understand
it. He said that if it could be accomplished he could sell it to the
government for a large sum of money. This suited me, and I started
in and succeeded in making such an instrument, which had in it the
germ of my quadruplex now used throughout the world, permitting the
despatch of four messages over one wire simultaneously. By the time
I had succeeded in getting the apparatus to work Ellsworth suddenly
disappeared. Many years afterward I used this little device again for
the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New Jersey, I had my laboratory. There
were several Western Union wires cut into the laboratory and used by
me in experimenting at night. One day I sat near an instrument which I
had left connected during the night. I soon found it was a private wire
between New York and Philadelphia, and I heard among a lot of stuff a
message that surprised me. A week after that I had occasion to go to
New York, and, visiting the office of the lessee of the wire, I asked
him if he hadn't sent such and such a message. The expression that came
over his face was a sight. He asked me how I knew of such message. I
told him the circumstances, and suggested that he had better cipher
such communications, or put on a secret sounder. The result of the
interview was that I installed for him my old Cincinnati apparatus,
which was used thereafter for many years."
Edison's second term in Cincinnati was not a very long one. After a
while he left and went home to Port Huron, where he stayed a short
time. He soon became tired of comparative idleness and communicated
with his old friend, Milton Adams, who was then working in Boston, and
whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work promptly in the East.
Edison himself gives the details of this eventful move, when he went
East to grow up with the new art of electricity. "I had left Louisville
the second time, and went home to see my parents. After stopping at
home for some time, I got restless, and thought I would like to work in
the East. Knowing that a former operator named Adams, who had worked
with me in the Cincinnati office, was in Boston, I wrote him that I
wanted a job there. He wrote back that if I came on immediately he
could get me in the Western Union office. I had helped out the Grank
Trunk Railroad telegraph people by a new device when they lost one
of the two submarine cables they had across the river, making the
remaining cable act just as well for their purpose as if they had two.
I thought I was entitled to a pass, which they conceded, and I started
for Boston. After leaving Toronto a terrific blizzard came up and
the train got snowed under in a cut. After staying there twenty-four
hours, the trainmen made snow-shoes of fence-rail splints and started
out to find food, which they did about a half mile away. They found a
roadside inn, and by means of snow-shoes all the passengers were taken
to the inn. The train reached Montreal four days late. A number of the
passengers and myself went to the military headquarters to testify
in favor of a soldier who had been two days late in returning from a
furlough, which was a serious matter with military people, I learned.
We willingly did this, for this soldier was a great story-teller, and
made the time pass quickly. I met here a telegraph operator named
Stanton, who took me to his boarding-house, the most cheerless I have
ever been in. Nobody got enough to eat; the bedclothes were too short
and too thin; it was twenty-eight degrees below zero, and the washwater
was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only one dollar and fifty
cents a week.
"Stanton said that the usual live-stock accompaniment of operators'
boarding-houses was absent; he thought the intense cold had caused
them to hibernate. Stanton, when I was working in Cincinnati, left
his position and went out on the Union Pacific to work at Julesburg,
which was a cattle town at that time and very tough. I remember seeing
him off on the train, never expecting to meet him again. Six months
afterward, while working press wire in Cincinnati, about 2 A.M., there
was flung into the middle of the operating-room a large tin box. It
made a report like a pistol, and we all jumped up startled. In walked
Stanton. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I have just returned from a pleasure
trip to the land beyond the Mississippi. All my wealth is contained
in my metallic traveling-case, and you are welcome to it.' The case
contained one paper collar. He sat down, and I noticed that he had a
woolen comforter around his neck, with his coat buttoned closely. The
night was intensely warm. He then opened his coat and revealed the fact
that he had nothing but the bare skin. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'you see
before you an operator who has reached the limit of impecuniosity.'"
VIII
WORK AND INVENTION IN BOSTON
When Milton Adams received Edison's letter from Port Huron he at once
went over to the Western Union Office and asked the manager, Mr. George
F. Milliken, if he did not want a good operator from the West.
"What kind of copy does he make?" was the cautious response. Adams
says: "I passed Edison's letter through the window for his inspection.
Milliken read it and a look of surprise came over his countenance
as he asked me if he could take it off the line like that. I said
he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick him.
Milliken said if he was that kind of an operator I could send for him;
and I wrote Edison to come on, as I had a job for him in the main
office of the Western Union."
On reporting to Mr. Milliken in Boston, Edison secured a "job" very
quickly. As he tells the story, he says: "The manager asked me when
I was ready to go to work. 'Now,' I replied. I was then told to
return at 5.30 P.M., and punctually at that hour I entered the main
operating-room and was introduced to the night manager. The weather
being cold, and being clothed poorly, my peculiar appearance caused
much mirth, and, as I afterward learned, the night operators had
consulted together how they might 'put up a job on the jay from the
woolly West.' I was given a pen and assigned to the New York No. 1
wire. After waiting an hour, I was told to come over to a special table
and take a special report for the _Boston Herald_, the conspirators
having arranged to have one of the fastest senders in New York send
the despatch and 'salt' the new man. I sat down unsuspiciously at
the table, and the New York man started slowly. Soon he increased
his speed, to which I easily adapted my pace. This put my rival on
his mettle, and he put on his best powers, which, however, were soon
reached. At this point I happened to look up, and saw the operators
all looking over my shoulder, with their faces shining with fun and
excitement. I knew then that they were trying to put up a job on me,
but kept my own counsel. The New York man then commenced to slur over
his words, running them together and sticking the signals; but I had
been used to this style of telegraphy in taking report, and was not in
the least discomfited. Finally, when I thought the fun had gone far
enough, and having about completed the special, I quietly opened the
key and remarked, telegraphically, to my New York friend, 'Say, young
man, change off and send with your other foot.' This broke the New York
man all up, and he turned the job over to another man to finish."
Edison did not devote his whole life at this time to the routine work
of a telegraph office. His insatiable desire for knowledge led him
to study deeply the underlying principles of electricity that made
telegraphy possible, and he was constantly experimenting to improve
the apparatus he handled daily, as well as pursuing his studies in
chemistry.
One day he was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of
Faraday's works. Mr. Adams says that when Edison brought home these
books, at 4 A.M., he read steadily until breakfast time, and then
he remarked, enthusiastically, "Adams, I have got so much to do and
life is so short I am going to hustle." And thereupon he started on
a run for breakfast. Edison himself says: "It was in Boston I bought
Faraday's works. I think I must have tried about everything in those
books. His explanations were simple. He used no mathematics. He was
the master experimenter. I don't think there were many copies of
Faraday's works sold in those days. The only people who did anything
in electricity were the telegraphers and the opticians, making simple
school aparatus to demonstrate the principles."
At this time there was a number of practical investigators and
electrical workers in Boston, and Edison with his congenial tastes soon
became very much at home with them. He spent a great deal of time among
them, and especially in the electrical workshop of the late Charles
Williams, who afterward became an associate of Alexander Graham Bell.
It was in this workshop that Edison worked out into an operative model
his first patented invention, a vote recorder. This forms the subject
of Edison's first patent, for which application was signed on October
11, 1868, the patent itself being taken out June 1, 1869, No. 90,646.
The purpose of this particular device was to permit a vote in the
National House of Representatives to be taken in a minute or so.
Edison took the vote recorder to Washington and exhibited it before
a committee. In recalling the circumstance, he says: "The chairman
of the committee, after seeing how quickly and perfectly it worked,
said: 'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that we don't
want down here it is this. One of the greatest weapons in the hands of
a minority to prevent bad legislation is filibustering on votes, and
this instrument would prevent it.' I saw the truth of this, because as
press operator I had taken miles of Congressional proceedings, and to
this day an enormous amount of time is wasted during each session of
the House in foolishly calling the members' names and recording, and
then adding, their votes, when the whole operation could be done in
almost a moment by merely pressing a particular button at each desk.
For filibustering purposes, however, the present methods are most
admirable."
The outcome of this exhibition was a great disappointment to the young
inventor, but it proved to be a wholesome lesson, for he determined
from that time forth to devote his inventive faculties only to things
for which there was a real, genuine demand. We shall see later that he
has ever since lived up to the decision then made.
After the above incident Edison, with increased earnestness, resumed
his study of electricity, especially in its application to telegraphy.
He did not neglect his chemistry, however, but indulged his tastes
freely in that direction, thus laying the foundation for the remarkable
chemical knowledge that enabled him later to make some of his great
inventions.
He tells an amusing incident of one of his chemical experiments of
this early period: "I had read in a scientific paper the method of
making nitroglycerin, and was so fired by the wonderful properties it
was said to possess that I determined to make some of the compound.
We tested what we considered a very small quantity, but this produced
such terrible and unexpected results that we became alarmed, the
fact dawning upon us that we had a very large white elephant in our
possession. At 6 A.M. I put the explosive into a sarsaparilla bottle,
tied a string to it, wrapped it in a paper, and gently let it down into
the sewer at the corner of State and Washington Streets."
The daily routine of a telegraph office and the busy hours of reading
and experimenting employed Edison's time for eighteen to twenty hours
a day. Life, however, was never too strenuous for him to indulge his
humor, especially if it called for the exercise of some ingenuity, as
shown in the following incident related by him: "The office was on the
ground floor, and had been a restaurant previous to its occupation
by the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was literally loaded with
cockroaches, which lived between the wall and the board running
around the room at the floor, and which came after the lunch. These
were such a bother on my table that I pasted two strips of tin-foil
on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive pole of
the big battery supplying current to the wires and the negative pole
to the other strip. The cockroaches moving up on the wall would pass
over the strips. The moment they got their legs across both strips
there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. This
automatic electrocuting device got half a column in an evening paper,
and attracted so much attention that the manager made me stop it."
About this time an innocent use of his chemical knowledge gave Edison
a narrow escape from injury which might have shortened his career. He
tells the story as follows: "After being in Boston several months,
working New York wire No. 1, I was requested to work the press wire,
called the 'milk route,' as there were so many towns on it taking
press simultaneously. New York office had reported great delays on the
wire, due to operators constantly interrupting, or 'breaking,' as it
was called, to have words repeated which they had failed to get; and
New York claimed that Boston was one of the worst offenders. It was a
rather hard position for me, for if I took the report without breaking,
it would prove the previous Boston operator incompetent. The results
made the operator have some hard feelings against me. He was put back
on the wire, and did much better after that. It seems that the office
boy was down on this man. One night he asked me if I could tell him how
to fix a key so that it would not 'break,' even if the circuit-breaker
was open, and also so that it could not be easily detected. I told
him to jab a penful of ink on the platinum points, as there was sugar
enough in it to make it sufficiently thick to hold up when the operator
tried to break--the current still going through the ink, so that he
could not break.
"The next night about 1 A.M. this operator, on the press wire, while
I was standing near a House printer studying it, pulled out a glass
insulator, then used upside down as a substitute for an ink-bottle,
and threw it with great violence at me, just missing my head. It would
certainly have killed me if it had not missed. The cause of the trouble
was that this operator was doing the best he could not to break, but,
being compelled to open his key, he found he couldn't. The press matter
came right along, and he could not stop it. The office boy had put the
ink in a few minutes before, when the operator had turned his head
during a lull. He blamed me instinctively as the cause of the trouble.
Later we became good friends. He took his meals at the same 'emaciator'
that I did. His main object in life seemed to be acquiring the art of
throwing up wash-pitchers and catching them without breaking them.
About a third of his salary was used up in paying for pitchers."
One of the most amusing incidents of Edison's life in Boston, occurred
through a request received at the Western Union office one day from the
principal of a select school for young ladies. The principal desired to
have some one sent up to the school to exhibit and describe the Morse
telegraph to her "children."